Thanks a lot for sharing your experience, Lorrae!

I agree with you there may be circumstances in which makes sense to "be interrupted". I sometimes leave some of my sentences hanging, because it's obvious for everybody what's my point (or so I hope!) and it's fine that somebody else starts talking there.

But about the more general cases, you are also right. I'm slowly starting to ask for the time to think and grant me these extra seconds I may need to start talking. However, when I'm interrupted in the middle of my speech, I tend to struggle more there. I liked the strategies you shared, so I may start to adopt them and be better at protecting my talking space.